“The Thief Lord”
There’s nothing particularly wrong with this film, except that it’s a copycat of just about every popular children’s story of the past fifty years. The publicity for the film bills it as a story to rival the “Harry Potter” series, but it’s more like “Robin Hood” meets “Peter Pan” than anything else. Based on the children’s book of the same name, “The Thief Lord” is a decent addition to any youngster’s movie collection, but it’s a giant waste of time for anybody else. And that’s something that can’t be said of “Harry Potter.”
“Irish Jam”
If Rob Schneider is the least talented white guy in Hollywood, then Eddie Griffin is the least talented brother. A fitting comparison considering that both “actors” appeared in last summer’s “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo,” a film so bad that it landed the top spot on many critics’ Worst of 2005 lists. If possible, “Irish Jam” is even worse, dropping the annoying Griffin in the middle of a small Irish town when he wins a poetry contest with a pub as the grand prize. Hell, even the DVD case is made of low-quality plastic, a surefire sign of genuine direct-to-DVD garbage.
“The Butterfly Ball”
We all know that the 70s was a strange era (even those that weren’t alive for it), but there’s simply no excuse for the DVD release of this 1975 live production of the illustrated series of poems entitled “The Butterfly Ball and Grasshopper’s Feast.” Narrated by an aged Vincent Price and featuring Twiggy on vocals, “The Butterfly Ball” is a horrendous production that includes stupid costumes, interpretive dance and a shitty video transfer to top it all off.
“The Jolly Boys’ Last Stand”
There’s really no better way to describe this film other than as a British “Jackass,” despite the fact that there’s actually very little stunting involved. Shot as a faux-documentary about a frat-like group of grown men known as the Jolly Boys, the story revolves around the upcoming marriage of the their leader, Spider (Andy Serkis), and his gradual separation from the remaining members. The film is composed of stupid situations that the cast members find funny, but anyone else watching won’t, and has most likely been made available on DVD in an atempt to exploit the more recent success of its stars, Andy Serkis and Sacha Baron Cohen.
